The present invention relates generally to the field of audio speakers, and in particular to a new and useful speaker unit having a spherical, ball shape in one mode of use, for example, for floating in a swimming pool, and a second mode of use with a bottom segment of the spherical shape indented into the body of the unit to leave a circular contact ring on which the unit can rest on a flat surface, without rolling.
Ball shaped speaker units are known. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,720,787 to Ishii et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,856,692 to Lin and U.S. Pat. No. 8,068,618 to Vollmer. If placed on a flat surface, these units would roll around at random and perhaps fall off a surface and be damaged.
Ball shaped speaker units having one flat surface are also known that would resist rolling around if placed on a flat surface. See for example, U.S. Pat. D593,543 to Lui, U.S. Pat. D676,423 to Joseph and U.S. Pat. D726,157 to Chang. These have no fully spherical shape, however, so they are missing the esthetic of a fully spherical speaker ball.
A line of furniture called “Sphere Chairs” by Jordan Guelde are known as of December 2007 at website http://www.coroflot.com/jgueldel3/sphere-chairs which include two nested arm chairs that form a sphere, with each having a spring loaded bottom segment that is pushed in when each chair is placed right-side-up, to create a flattened contact area at the bottom so the chairs do not roll around. There is no selection of which mode, i.e. flat-bottomed or spherical, to choose as the segment is pushed in by gravity only. Also, such furniture is well outside the art of speaker design and considerations.